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  Xi’s ominous purge of his top general President’s power play bodes badly whether it is a sign of strength or weakness Zhang Youxia, centre, who has been ousted from his role as vice-chair of China’s Central Military Commission, is not the first top military leader to fall from favour © Greg Baker/AFP/Getty Images Published 4 hours ago It shows just how opaque Chinese politics is that even close watchers differ widely over both the cause and the implications of Xi Jinping’s recent purge of his top general, Zhang Youxia. Some see the toppling of Zhang, vice-chair of China’s Central Military Commission, as a signal of unexpected vulnerability for Xi. A more common view is that it is another step in the autocratic president’s expertly orchestrated drive to increase his personal power. Reality may be somewhere in between. But whichever interpretation is closer to the truth, the purge is a worrying development in the world’s number-two military and economic power. Those who detect weak...
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  Progressives seem oddly quiet about the murderous ayatollahs The lack of protest over Iran’s atrocities reveals how some causes are deemed worthier than others Matthew Syed I was nine years old when the Iran- Iraq war commenced and perhaps 13 when I watched a news report about what became known as the child martyrs of the Ayatollah. I wasn’t very political back then but when you hear that kids of your age have been indoctrinated to walk, and sometimes run, into machinegun fire to clear a path for the adult solders coming up behind, you tend to sit up and take notice. Perhaps 20,000 children died in this way, some as young as nine. Evil is a loaded term, but I hope we can use it to describe the regime in Tehran, which hasn’t changed in any material respect in the intervening decades. Over recent weeks we have heard reports of what some have called “unprecedented” atrocities sanctioned by the ayatollahs, but they are far from unprecedented. This is business as usual for a regime th...
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  Can an alliance divided against itself compete with China? | Brookings Jonathan A. Czin January 30, 2026 President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen (R) speaks with Chinese President Xi Jinping during the opening remarks of the 25th European Union - China Summit at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on July 24, 2025. (Andres Martinez Caseres/POOL/AFP via Getty Images) 9 min read The European Union’s (EU) China policy is stuck. So, too, is U.S. China policy. Countries on both sides of the Atlantic have gone too far down the path of competition with China to return to the earlier era of commerce and comity. Yet neither side of the transatlantic partnership seems able to chart a clear way forward for coping with the multifaceted China challenge. The recent crisis in transatlantic relations has only compounded the quandary. It has also dramatically dimmed the prospects of  Zack Cooper ’s appropriately modest agenda for transatlantic cooperation on China. Inste...
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  Navigated Menu Back Financial Times Financial Times UK 31 Jan 2026 Buttons.Search Options The mean­ing of Xi’s mil­it­ary purge Den­nis Wilder The writer was Spe­cial Assist­ant to the Pres­id­ent and senior dir­ector for east Asia at the National Secur­ity Coun­cil from 2005 to 2009 Settings Print Share Listen Since Xi Jin­ping became pres­id­ent of the People’s Repub­lic of China in 2013, many ana­lysts have con­vinced them­selves that he is omni­po­tent, his power and author­ity unchal­lenged. For such observ­ers, the pur­ging of China’s mil­it­ary lead­er­ship, includ­ing top gen­eral Zhang Youxia last week­end, among oth­ers, was simply another example of Xi clear­ing out the dead wood, root­ing out the cor­rupt or under­per­formers in the upper ech­el­ons of the People’s Lib­er­a­tion Army. However, recent events show that this assess­ment is dan­ger­ously wrong. First, it ignores the long­time para­noia of Xi, who claims to have dis­cerned the evil hand of the Amer­ican CI...
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